Court reporters; duties and salaries; remote availability; transcripts; certifications; continuing education; shorthand reporter examinations; methods; effective date; emergency.

The document header changed from 'FLOOR SUBSTITUTE FOR ENGROSSED' to 'COMMITTEE SUBSTITUTE', indicating the bill has been revised by the House Committee.

Page numbers, headers, and footer text were removed to create a clean floor version of the bill.

The summary of the act was updated to change 'increasing certain annual salary' to 'updating statutory outline' and 'modifying allowable methods' to 'reducing and expanding allowable methods', reflecting specific committee amendments.

Minor punctuation adjustments were made in the summary, such as changing 'and Section 106.9' to 'and Section 106.9' and adding 'and' before 'providing an effective date'.

The bill title changed from 'Committee Substitute' to 'Floor Substitute', reflecting its progression through the legislative process.

The summary of the bill's purpose was updated to include 'updating statutory language' and 'declaring an emergency'.

A new provision was added to Section 106.9 establishing a fixed annual salary of $53,000 for court reporters.

Page numbers and reference numbers were updated to reflect the new version of the document.

The document header was updated to reflect the 'House Committee Substitute' status and the 2nd Session of the 60th Legislature (2026), replacing the previous 'Engrossed' header.

A specific page reference ('ENGR. H. B. NO. 3970') was removed from the footer, likely to be replaced by the new committee substitute tracking number.

Minor spacing and punctuation adjustments were made throughout the text, such as adding extra spaces between paragraphs and standardizing line breaks.

Judges may now order proceedings to be electronically recorded and proceed without a court reporter if none is available remotely or in person.

If an official transcript is ordered from an electronic recording, it must be prepared by an official court reporter and is the only version permitted for subsequent appeals.

Parties may agree to use a freelance reporter and share costs, but the resulting transcript is only valid for the current case unless prepared by an official reporter.

The definition of allowable reporting methods was updated to include electronic instruments as supplementary devices.

Formatting errors and conflicting text from previous amendment versions were cleaned up.

The bill's title and summary were updated to explicitly mention 'remote availability' and clarify the statutory references, while removing the 'declaring an emergency' clause.

The document structure was reorganized, changing the header from 'Enrolled House Bill' to 'Engrossed Senate Amendment' and renumbering all sections.

The specific salary figures ($53,000 and $65,000) were removed from the text, likely due to a formatting error in the amendment markup rather than a policy change.

The annual base salary for official court reporters was increased from $53,000 to $65,000.

A specific provision allowing parties to stipulate the use of freelance reporters when an official reporter is unavailable was removed from the final version.

The bill text was converted from an introduced draft to an enrolled final version, updating headers and formatting.